LAFC set for US Open Cup quarterfinals after Houston postponement – ​​Daily News

LAFC midfielder Eduard Atuesta and his teammates had their MLS game in Houston postponed Sunday, then boarded a flight out of the area just as Hurricane Beryl slammed into the Texas Gulf Coast. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

With the Los Angeles Football Club’s game in Houston postponed on Sunday, the Black & Gold rushed out of town as Hurricane Beryl moved closer to the Texas Gulf Coast.

Days after Beryl became the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record as it roared over the Caribbean, LAFC was set to travel to Shell Energy Stadium and face the team it defeated to reach the MLS Cup final last year.

As the outer bands of the storm soaked the region in the early part of the day and a later downpour drenched the field amid lightning, the MLS regular-season match with the Dynamo, which had been moved up two hours, was canceled.

The move gave coach Steve Cherundolo and his team a chance to move on instead of hunkering down and waiting.

“Once we got there, we all wanted to play,” Cherundolo said. “I think both clubs did. But Mother Nature had other plans, so we were happy to get out in time before things got bad. Looking at the pictures, things got bad, so we were happy to land safely in Los Angeles.”

Deadly storm Beryl left 3 million Harris County residents without power.

Flights to and from the region’s two airports were canceled for much of Monday, with limited service the following day.

Not wanting to be stranded, LAFC rushed out of the stadium and packed up their equipment. The players, coaches and staff then waited for a Sun Country Airlines charter plane stationed in Dallas to pick them up, which arrived around 10 p.m. local time, 90 minutes earlier than they would have had to leave had the game taken place.

Once on board and sitting on the tarmac, Beryl’s strong winds buffeted the plane.

From takeoff to breaking through the cloud cover, the journey was nerve-wracking.

Eduard Atuesta’s first encounter with a hurricane “scared me a little bit,” the midfielder said. With Beryl coming within 300 miles of Atuesta’s native Colombia, the LAFC midfielder got a much closer look than he ever wanted.

“When you hear it’s a hurricane, you think, ‘Wow, what’s that? That’s something big,’” Atuesta said. “But thanks to God, we came back strong. We wanted to play to keep winning games in this good phase that we’re going through right now. But it doesn’t matter.”

Cherundolo had planned to rotate the lineup against Houston, leaving Atuesta, Ilie Sanchez, Ryan Hollingshead and Kei Kamara on the bench. Starting goalkeeper Hugo Lloris did not make the trip. Neither did midfielder Timothy Tillman, who was scheduled to be suspended for the game due to a yellow card accumulation but will be served against the Columbus Crew on Saturday.

When New Mexico takes to the field at BMO Stadium for the first time, Tillman will start in a strong team that includes Lloris making his U.S. domestic cup debut.

If there’s one positive to traveling without playing in Houston, it’s that during the club’s busiest stretch of games this year, the players have one less game in their legs.